Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression & Unleash Your Soul's Potential

“The tools Barry and Phil teach in Coming Alive gave me the courage and clarity to align myself with the truth—no matter how hard or painful it seemed at the time.”—Gwyneth Paltrow

Tap into the Life Force with this critical and contemporary guide to unlocking our most powerful selves—from the bestselling authors of The Tools (and Goop’s resident shrinks).

In The Tools, Michels and Stutz revolutionized the world of personal growth. Now, in Coming Alive, they guide readers toward a wellspring of positive energy: the source of creativity, renewal, and engagement. The first step in gaining mastery over one’s life—in deepening both emotional and spiritual experiences—is identifying the enemy within, which Michels and Stutz have named Part X. This formidable adversary is a shape-shifter: it may be the voice in your head that is a torrent of negativity; it may take the form of outside forces that conspire against you. In whatever guise it appears, Part X aims to derail your progress, keep you small and stuck, and defeat hope.

The four vital tools in Coming Alive help you connect to the Life Force—a wellspring of positive energy that is the source of creativity, renewal, confidence, and engagement—and harness the energy and will to combat Part X. Drawing insights from their decades of psychotherapeutic practice, their lived experience, and their moving and generous understanding of our interconnectedness, Michels and Stutz have created a paradigm-shifting guide to achieving optimal mental health and spiritual well-being.

Praise for Coming Alive

“What a gift! A riveting exploration of four (bone-chillingly relatable) modern ailments and their thrillingly practical solutions . . . Singular in its approach and deeply spiritual in its concerns, Coming Alive is a book I’ll be pressing on friends and foes alike.”—Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette